


Foxholes and Lost Causes

by nonky



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12057723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: People seemed to either assume they were a couple - no one had even questioned Lee and Kara would be sharing a tent - or they were close enough friends it barely mattered they weren't together. Fleet decorum was no longer an issue.





	Foxholes and Lost Causes

Lee would have thought a sky with actual weather and a soft forest floor would be a dream, but he hated being wet and forced to move slowly on foot up mountains.

Purpose was fleeting in the face of sheeting rain. Lee Adama, presumably stripped of his rank in his desertion and treason, had a mission from a similarly diminished president and gods he didn't believe existed. 

He was stupidly following ancient trinkets in a path written on a religious text in cryptic details that mixed symbols and physical landmarks interchangably. They were led by a Cylon captive who had fooled multiple people into protecting her, and one officer into falling in love and fathering a half-toaster baby. 

His father might be dead. Lee was one of a very few human beings able to breathe fresh air, and his lungs couldn't process it. His chest was too tight, stress wringing his heart uneasily. He was better when he was slogging through filthy jungle. It matched his mood. 

Beside him, Kara shifted to her knees and finally accepted she wasn't going to find a chair. She sat back and crossed her legs, sighing. Her hand slipped down to her belly, rubbed at a mysterious sore spot she wouldn't explain, and she took it away awkwardly when she realized Lee was looking. 

He wasn't sure she was able to trek across a planet, looking for a tomb. He had asked her if she needed anything, and her lack of answer was what they usually fell back to when neither was in obvious crisis. Lee felt he shouldn't push her too hard after her second miraculous return. He hoped she trusted him to help, and he had to trust her opinion on Helo and his Cylon. 

He would give Kara anything, but letting Sharon live burned him. He couldn't help watching the toaster smile and cuddle with a fleet pilot. It was repulsive. Leaving out the way her double had tried - possibly succeeded - in murdering his father, it was impossible to call that love. Helo had been tricked. It was likely not his fault, and he was trying to protect his child. Lee could understand that. A human child carried by a murderous machine was a hostage.

The tenderness of Agathon's eyes didn't add up. A machine could act human for a while. It could fool people, but it couldn't feel things. In Lee's experience, love didn't deepen like Helo's without something reciprocal to feed it. And Cylon babies were the creepiest thing he'd ever imagined. It made him sick, and he couldn't look away except to check that Kara was still huddled in their tent next to him. 

"It's disgusting," he griped. "Look at them."

Kara didn't watch Helo kissing his Sharon. She shrugged, as if somewhere in her lovely insanity she'd made peace with it. Knowing where she'd just come from, maybe she'd seen a lot worse than a Raptor pilot kissing a Cylon prisoner.

Terribly, it was only thinking of what Kara refused to say she'd suffered that made his own anxiety leave him alone for a few minutes at a time. There wasn't enough emotional space to worry about his father when she was looking frail. Lee needed to get her talking, about anything. He would normally try to cheer her up, but he didn't have any jokes or safety to offer. When he wasn't overwhelmed with not knowing the next step, he was angry.

"It's love, it doesn't have to make sense," she said simply. "But you can stop watching them like that. I'm not asking you trust the Cylon, but you can trust Helo. I'll vouch for him. If he told me to take those cuffs off her and have Sharon watch my back, I'd believe Karl. He stranded himself on Caprica willingly because Gaius Baltar said he could help the fleet survive. Helo is loyal. She was all he thought he had of humanity left on a whole world. Think about how lonely that must have been."

Lee had no desire to imagine an empty, dead Caprica, scrubbed clean of bodies but echoing atrocity. A mission there was like being sent to disturb a fresh grave. If Kara had trusted him with President Roslin's request he would have locked her up himself. He was still furious with Roslin, Kara and his father. All three of them kept forcing his hand when circumstances didn't give any clearly moral choice.

Kara was slowly earning forgiveness, every inhale against his shoulder a penance he was counting toward being certain she was back. She sighed and dropped a ration bar to her lap with a microscopic portion eaten. 

"Do you want to talk about it," he asked meekly. It was important with Kara not to be too concerned. When he focused on her, she disappeared into herself.

She folded and folded the foil around her dinner, saving it for another time she wouldn't eat it. Her hands came together to form a shape he couldn't catch, because Lee was too amazed she answered him.

"It didn't feel like anywhere I'd been before. You're probably picturing it worse than it was," she said. "It wasn't horrifying. It wasn't there anymore. I slept in my own apartment for a night and it was only vaguely familiar because the clothes fit me. Almost fit me. They all felt too big."

She looked smaller. Kara let her hair fall around her face and slumped forward. Lee would have given anything then to hear her sob, but she held it in. The moment over, she looked away with her lips set firmly.

She had the experience of visiting her old life like a museum exhibit. The memories of her sparse home were swallowed by surreal looting of her own belongings.

He shuddered and let it go. Kara was tired and her voice was hoarse. He offered the canteen. She drank and handed it back, but he waved it off. She needed to eat more, and wouldn't. More water was a temporary fix. The rainwater was potable and the sky was always full of heavy clouds waiting to rain on them again. 

Helo stroked a hand down that thing's face, leaned in too close to see if he spoke or just nuzzled her. It irritated the hopeless sense of anger Lee was carrying. 

Kara would support him, but she had made up her mind about Sharon. There was acceptance in her glances at her friend. Beside Lee, she slumped into a doze. He uncurled her fingers from the canteen, closing it slowly so it didn't make noise. 

He wasn't alone. He was trying to hold on to the gratitude that had flooded him when Kara came around the corner. The kiss was impulsive, but it joined a list of stupid actions committed around her. Booze gave him the excuse, or tiredness or some other stress so easily found in their slapped together society on the run. 

People seemed to either assume they were a couple - no one had even questioned Lee and Kara would be sharing a tent - or they were close enough friends it barely mattered they weren't together. Fleet decorum was no longer an issue.

The full, heavy rightness of Kara slumping into his shoulder as she slept prevented him from sleeping. It was a kind of rest to just know she was present and breathing, adding her warm exhales to the pocket universe of their tent. 

Lee nearly held his breath, counting seconds and then minutes until he was sure she was deeply asleep. He set the canteen slowly down, and cradled her shoulders forward until he could put his arm around her. His hand brushed down her side and crept under her arm.

He held still as Kara found his hand and pressed it to the maddening spot on her belly, the spot she covered gingerly to protect. Her hand wrapped around his thumb, holding him to her body as if he could heal her wound. 

He wanted to do the impossible for her, to know a way he really could heal instead of just comfort. He wanted to be able to tell her to visit Doc Cottle and get a checkup. He wanted to have a better answer for her whether they could expect to see his father pacing the bridge upon their return, mulling over his phrasing of their reprimands. 

Lee wasn't sure there was a fleet to rejoin. He shut his eyes and pushed back at the reality. It wasn't going to help him get the few minutes sleep he might find. He needed to try to be okay, because Kara wasn't.

 

Tenderness was easier to hold on to with a sleepy, silent Kara. They'd slept huddled together. He turned his back on Helo's tent and allowed himself to not care for a while. Lee had actually sighed in pleasure as he woke to a warm woman curled to his front. She hadn't shoved him away and complained of personal space, or made fun of his arms around her like they were something with a name and a place in the universe. 

Her face in his vision was mostly cheekbone, and it raised like a smile when she pushed his arm away gently. The Kara who had come back from Caprica was sharper along the cheekbones from more than limited food supplies, and surprisingly calm. It was a balm to his every shattered routine to have her finally just there and listening to what he said. It only took starting a mutiny, getting kicked out of the fleet and throwing in with a mission based on scripture and rumour. 

The good beginning to the day made him cocky. Lee kept trying too hard to help her up slippery spots and make jokes that fell flat. He ignored Helo and the Cylon. He put up with Tom Zarek. He'd wanted to argue with Kara to eat, but his fatigue was sharpening to sniping reproach. Lee was thinking harshly, and his words were not going to be coaxing. He let her pick at food, both of them off their appetites. 

Lee lay down first, head on his pack. He meant to stay awake, but it started raining and he gave in to his body. He was so miserably tired, and comfort seemed beside the point. He focused on the warm patch of his leg where Kara's hip was touching him, and slept.

 

Lee wasn't even able to sleep now. He surfaced to find the rain had stopped and Agathon was wooing his toaster loudly enough to hear some of the words. 

" - have a boy. Get Starbuck to help me teach him pyramid."

Helo smiled, his palm running along the Cylon's belly as she whispered to him. He looked complete, as if every day without respite had been made up by the seconds of contact. 

Maybe that's all that remained for people to do, Lee thought. Seek connection and guard it, let it dull the edges and warm the visceral despair of being driven extinct. 

He pulled Kara up and into the woods. She followed, huffing as he insisted she keep going by leading her on and pushing her ahead of him. His roughness must have convinced her to follow without arguing. Arguing more, in any case, because that whole day had been a struggle not to snipe at her for every miserable comment. 

Finally, he felt some space at his back, buffering them from camp. He pushed her toward a tree and waited until she turned to pin her to the bark. Kara threw out a shrug, her expression bleak.

"I'm not going to watch them treat this like a honeymoon while I sleep next to you and don't-" His mouth covered Kara's, too forceful for his own good. She was going to give him two black eyes and a free castration.

She went soft and relaxed, like he'd placed her gently on a satin bed. Her hands landed on him and she tilted her neck in surrender. Tough Kara Thrace had come back with a skipped step, as if she was hiding her fear behind what she remembered how to do. Her hand came up to his chest, and Lee didn't know if the pressure was a hold or a push away. He took a step back and panted at her stupidly.

"I thought going to Caprica in a Cylon Raider was the craziest thing," she murmured. "And I came back to you doing stuff I wouldn't dream. I wouldn't have dared to picture it, and it's all wilder than that. Then you drag me out here to frak me on a tree, and somehow that's the part I can't accept as reality."

He pulled away, looking at her, aware of the moment in all its extraordinary impulsiveness. This was the minefield they strolled when they were both in this mood. He was hanging exactly between not giving a single frak and caring about everything that had ever happened.

"This is the part I could picture all along," he whispered. "This is the only part of the last few weeks I wanted to do."

Kara took it in, looked away while she made a decision, and looked at him with a firm nod. It was sparse foreplay, but Lee would take it. 

His hands stuck to her like magnets, running from her knees to her face. Her clothes were rough, but she was soft underneath. She tilted and leaned to suit him, her palms holding his hands down on her where she liked him. Kara kissed sweetly. Starbuck was gone for a while, and this was all gentle understanding. No one was fighting for action or patience. 

The same place at the same time in the same mood with just a little privacy, and Lee would love Kobol forever if only for that. 

He went for her zipper and she had his buttons hanging open. Kara's pants were borrowed, and she had a belt to keep them up. The excess fabric created a little trap door at her hip Lee's hand fell into. He hung from her lips, chasing the smallest curve as if Kara towered above him. Sometimes he thought she might, as huge in height as she was in his fascination.

Their power balance was a breakneck teeter-totter, as childish as it was dangerous. Lee felt her palm smooth up to his neck, fingers curling around the sides. He stood for it because the contact felt good, awkward as it was to be gripped by the throat. 

Kara was looking into his face, looking for something about him. Her hand moved to trace his jaw lightly, then both hands cupped his face. She shaped her fingers along his cheekbones, avoiding the mess of his overgrown stubble. Kara liked crisply shaven faces, and she sculpted her fingertips down his nose reverently. 

"I was very glad to see you," she told him. "The Astral Queen was the last place I'd have looked for you, but it felt right if there was only going to be one familiar person it was you."

Lee knew he should be trying to hold on to some anger she'd left him to jump to Caprica. It was impossible at the opposite side of the scare. It was an addictive cycle of being freaked out, incensed at her gall and finally reassured he had the hook that was knotted to her wandering line. 

She threw her arms around him and leaned in, kissing him with warm precision. Her lips lined up perfectly with his own, their layers and layers of symmetry folding them up inside like a cocoon. They had this quiet sometimes, this anchoring stillness giving him a priceless thing he knew she wouldn't give away to anyone else. It had both their names on it, and they had to carry it between them. 

His aggression stuttered and died. Lee kissed her back so gently he expected Kara's nerve would break first. Instead she held to it, leading his tongue with slow, shallow draws across his teeth. Like they had time enough, and would never run out; her usual force a troubling absence. Kara had always been able to kiss him quickly and run away. This wasn't bravery to suddenly be able to bear intimacy. 

"You're so difficult," he whispered. "You shouldn't be my favourite, but you are. I didn't have any choice except to be here when you came back."

Kara's eyes welled up, her face going pale as she seemed overcome. "But why me? You could do so much better than me," she said. 

"Nothing better than you. Nothing except you," Lee said firmly. "It's my job to make sure you're okay. Are you okay, Kara?"

Her thoughts went somewhere painful, and instead of pasting a smile over it, she answered. 

"I'm cold inside. I can't get warm. Something inside me won't stop shaking," Kara told him. 

Lee had learned to take his anger and build a hearth around it, an eternal flame that bore her name but would never memorialize a woman he'd never permit to die. He could warm her, body and soul. He could will strength to her physical self and lend his own convictions to her holding back. 

"Let me help," he said. "I know you feel it, too. It's all yours. I've been saving it."

He drew blunt fingernails over the legs of her pants, harsh lines digging into her thighs as he scored his way to her hips. She exhaled, moving her body in a single sinuous curve that ended with a closed mouth purr on his neck. Her head ducked and she turned her back. 

Kara opened her belt and the pants were quick to slide down her legs. They stumbled over clothes pushed down, kicking until their knees were steady. Kara hesitated before spreading her legs. She was breathing a little nervously, no famous Starbuck sass in evidence. 

Lee pulled her panties down delicately. He hovered with his cock out awkwardly, desperate for her to ask for him. He needed something personal, a moment that felt like them on this chasm of want. 

"Lee? Come in slow," she whispered. 

"I'd never rush this," he said, gratitude warring with the distant worry he shouldn't let this be how they consecrated one another. 

She made a noise, not even sexual in particular, just a very full sigh. Kara's hips canted back to him, her body bending more until she was nearly doubled over against the tree. He followed her, all his pondering about overlapping loyalties solved in bending her over in the woods away from their campsite. It didn't matter this was the opposite of romantic and comfortable. It didn't matter they might not make it out of there. 

Their seemingly thoughtless and crass display was actually as solemn as a wedding night. He might trip over his pants around his ankles and she might end up with tree bark in her hair. 

They would love each other when and where they found themselves, around duty and without compromise. And if both the fleet and the president ordered them to stop, Lee knew he'd be pointing a gun at his commanding officers and committing mutiny again. 

It had felt very odd his treason had been without Kara around to encourage it. Lee had always thought he'd burn down his career with her at his side, cheering him on and goading him until he harnessed all his ugly, impatient resentment. He'd grown up hating the fleet, the sour feeling of being forgotten for something that didn't recognize he lived in neglect. 

It was a very soft passion. Lee made sure every draw back lingered with his longing to return. He pressed himself deep to her, keeping each thrust controlled. He could be what she needed, stirring the quavering flesh of her core to a warm flow of release. They could do the screaming, shaking, thunderstorm of a joining when her hands didn't need to be wound through his own. They could learn how it was to ride these feelings like a comet. 

"Lee, I need you to stop soon," Kara whispered. "We can't finish like this."

They couldn't finish ever. He would convince her one day, when his head worked. Lee pulled out with a sigh he wouldn't voice. He earned his small chances to gain her trust by stopping cold when she did, and the hot grip of her pussy was no excuse to ignore her now. 

"Is this okay? Does your knee hurt?"

She shook her head, hair flicking his eyes. "No, I'm good."

His hand skimmed her front, under the open shirt and down to rub at her belly, avoiding the injured side because his hands wanted to clutch at her unwisely. Lee made himself keep his hand flat, petting gently "What about that new scar you won't talk about?"

Kara froze, and he wondered if he'd shut this down with his babbling. Lee just needed to know he wasn't acting selfishly and ignoring some signal of trouble. Kara didn't cope with personal issues, she just disappeared for a while. 

"Turn me around."

He took his hand away and put it on the tree, his forehead brushing her neck. "I'm sorry . . . "

"I didn't ask for an apology. I want to talk to you, and I need to look at you. Turn me around."

Her eyes were warm as she looked at him, her face serious. 

"Are you okay," she asked, ducking his arm until they were facing. "I have to believe you know talking about previous injuries is not sexy."

Lee studied her, but he knew she was a good card player. She could hide reactions. He never had an answer that made her happy with him. He had all the answers for so many years and then Kara burst into his life like a second horizon. He didn't know what to say to keep her with him.

"I needed you," he told her. "I really needed you and you were gone, and I couldn't wait for you. I threw a mutiny. It was my most Starbuck moment ever and I didn't even get to share it with you."

He wasn't trying to guilt her. The mission to Caprica had been justified by her success. It was only crazy the timing had unleashed this personal hell on him during her absence. His morals had been telling him to support Roslin and he hadn't been able to bring it to Kara. 

She giggled, and mimed her fingers in a gun to the side of his head, like he'd done to Tigh. "Gods, it wasn't even my birthday!"

It was so shamelessly crass, joking about nearly killing their superior officer with their pants down. They were manic, laughing over horrible things and disasters. They were laughing into the dead air of this world where no one lived. Maybe they were both as crazy as people whispered.

"We're completely frakked," Kara said, chuckling. 

He looked down at their half-naked bodies. "We're half-frakked, which is worse."

She had strained look, and hid behind her hair for a few seconds. "Yeah, um, don't come in me? I mean, normally I wouldn't mind, but I spent a few days in a Cylon-run hospital. They were drugging me and I'm not sure I'm covered."

Lee tried to brush off the incidentals of that - Kara thinking of being together as something that could ever be considered normal was hurting his head - without giving in to his horror. A Cylon hospital for several days, added to a new scar and the certainty she'd been drugged was a story he wasn't prepared to absorb. 

"They hurt you," he said softly. 

"Not like that. They really were treating me for my gunshot, but they also kept me sedated a lot. Their doctor was really invested in taking care of my reproductive health."

"Bastards." He was seeing hands on her, cutting into her body without knowing the temple they defiled. He was picturing eyes on her measuring her by flesh instead of love. It was unbearably sad and he couldn't allow it to be real yet. 

"You're making it better," Kara told him, her eyes fixing on the reflexive jerk of his cock as it felt her looking. "You make it feel so much better. I just can't - The frakking toasters don't get to use this against us. If it happens, it needs to be clean and human. It needs to be mine."

She was implying babies were the goal, and Lee had never felt such a protective urge. He smoothed Kara's hair away from her face and let himself want one more impossible thing. 

"I wouldn't let them take it from you," he vowed. 

"I know that."

She was more graceful than him as she picked a spot on the ground and threw her jacket down. Kara urged him to hurry, and he lay down first to keep her off the cold bed. She clamored around on top of him for a few extra seconds, easing the burn of penetration with her hand guiding him up into her pussy. 

Her hips worked him frantically, because even nervous Kara was braver than he was. She pulled his stroking fingers to her breast. She smiled with the unfocused warmth of love breaking the bounds of mortal flesh and showing her for the angel he knew her to be. 

Lee ached. He hurt for her more than when he'd nearly lost her. They had nearly missed this, and he couldn't bear it. He couldn't keep it inside when he knew Kara welcomed him. 

She shook and her body tightened. He wasn't going to come in her. It wasn't fair to cause her worry for a momentary pleasure. He braced and felt her resist with a muffled whimper. 

"I can wait for you," he promised quietly. "I want to see you, Kara."

His free hand kneaded at her belly, pressing and holding where she was trembling with the finest delicacy. Lee deepened his breathing and thrust up into her, on fire with the certainty Kara was too far gone to be interrupted. He strained up with his shoulders to meet her when she leaned down to kiss him. 

It shouldn't have been able to be more, though it expanded to swallow the universe with an odd hum to his ears. Lee tried to make it last, hissing breath around her lips and guiding her as she jerked to a stop. He pulled her to motion again, prolonging the grind of her body. He flexed deliberately, earning one of her really gusty laughs that descended into a cry of his name. 

He held out to the last second, lifting her away as her body went slack. The sudden freedom was oddly stifling. Lee pulled her across his body and got Kara by the ass. He pumped his throbbing cock on her belly, grateful when she moved unsteadily in counterpoint. He gripped her with both hands and came with a hoarse noise muffled in her hair. 

"Gods, Kara . . . I think if I hadn't pulled out my heart would have stopped," he said, minutes later when they were both curled together comfortably. 

"You would have been fine," she said, her tone loving. "You have a very strong heart."

Lee felt weak, but it was a refreshing laxness after days of tension. There was nothing more he could do or wish to have. His arms were full of Kara and his head buzzed with the absence of thoughts. He couldn't fix everything, but it had fallen apart to arrange his sated limbs in a love knot with Kara's warm body. 

He was lost in the universe, but she had returned to him like they had beacons to guide them. Every other fractured hope would heal.


End file.
